I found an article in which a guy named John Valentine, who claims to have extraordinary credentials, argues that the current Data Center craze is being driven not so much by the current advances in AI, but by companies running extremely inefficient software (at least that's what I understood) dating all the way back to the 1980's ... My BS detector is ringing loudly on his claims, but I haven't found a way to verify his credentials, nor if what' he's saying is actually true.

Here's the article I'm referring to. And here's a two-minute video of part of his alleged testimony:

Any thoughts?

 

Data Centers have become a hot topic here in Ohio with the onset of mid-term elections. I have seen them misrepresented in a dozen ways. The big question being do they increase my electricity cost? Personally I have not seen any large increase in my electric bill.

Ron

 

Member @schmitt trigger could have something to say here.

 

nor if what' he's saying is actually true

It sounds like BS to me. AI needs data centers because they need huge amounts of compute resources to drive and develop their engines. Data centers are a way to have a lot of compute power in one place, presumably where infrastructure (power, water, land, etc) prices are more reasonable than residential areas. They sell compute resources to whoever wants them. That would be difficult to do by using the resources of computers belonging to individuals that are not dedicated to applications using compute servers. Additionally, that $4000 computer is likely not configured to run "server" applications effectively or efficiently and availability isn't constant.

For me, it's going to be difficult to determine whether data centers affect consumer electricity prices in any meaningful way because residential customer usage is variable and power utilities raise rates for various reasons.

If new infrastructure needs to be put in place, someone has to pay for it. Is it the data centers exclusively? Or are power utilities charging everyone for the improvements? Data center usage will be pretty much continuous. If residential customers are offsetting cost by prioritizing off-hour usage, data centers also use power during off-hours. It seems to me that the excess supply during "off-hours" would become less available, so prices would increase based on supply vs demand.


The thing I can't understand is why the approving agencies involved aren't requiring water used for cooling data centers to be recycled. I've seen numbers saying some data centers use 300,000 gallons of water per day (100M gallons/year if none of it being recycled). It should be an absolute requirement that data centers use resources like water efficiently.

 

The thing I can't understand is why the approving agencies involved aren't requiring water used for cooling data centers to be recycled.

They typically use evaporative coolers, which evaporate a significant portion of the water to do the cooling.

 

They typically use evaporative coolers, which evaporate a significant portion of the water to do the cooling.

That's what I don't understand. They're going to be there for the long haul. Why not do the right thing and use a closed loop system for cooling?

 

That's what I don't understand. They're going to be there for the long haul. Why not do the right thing and use a closed loop system for cooling?

People already complain about the noise ... their constant humming day and night ... a closed loop system would probably increase that noise significantly.